THE SMARTPHONE MARKET REPORT: The State of The Global Handset Industry Ahead Of Apple's Launch Day

With the mobile industry gearing up for Apple's device launch day September 9, it's a good time to take stock of the global smartphone market.

The market has become much more competitive recently, particularly among smartphone brands. The two leaders, Apple and Samsung, are losing share to manufacturers out of China and elsewhere.

In BI Intelligence's new quarterly update on the smartphone industry, we also find that Android, Google's mobile operating system, has gained on Apple's iOS platform in many markets globally.

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Here are some of the top data points and current trends in the global smartphone market, on both the hardware and software side:

Hardware -

• Overall the industry is still growing at a healthy clip, with 23% year-over-year growth in the second quarter, which saw 295 million smartphone shipments. Four vendors, listed in the report, grew faster than the industry at large. ZTE had an off quarter and grew only 2%.
• Samsung and Apple have slipped. Apple's solid growth is not enough to keep up with these vendors in the East. Samsung's shipments declined for the first time ever in the second quarter, -4% year-over-year, amid rising competition.
• Chinese vendors are outselling Samsung: Combined, the five Chinese vendors outsold Samsung in the second quarter by about one million shipments.
• Chinese vendors account for one-third of all Android handsets: Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi, ZTE, and Coolpad accounted for about 30% of all Android phones shipped during the period.

Software -

• Android is increasing its market share of smartphone sales across Europe's five largest markets - the U.K., Germany, Italy, Spain, and France. Apple's overall Europe share, meanwhile, has dwindled.
• China is dominated on the OS side by Android with its 84% share of sales. It is a two-horse platform race - no other platform comes close to Apple's second place share of 13%.
• Android has gained 40 percentage points of market share in Brazil over the past two years. Meanwhile, the "Other" category in Brazil, which includes Symbian and other platforms, has almost disappeared.
• Windows Phone has seen a resurgence across Europe: It has even surpassed Apple for the No. 2 spot in Spain. Other platforms control negligible shares. It has firmly entrenched itself as the third-place platform in this lucrative market with a 9% share of shipments in the second quarter of 2014. That is up from 7% in the second quarter last year and up from a 5% share two years ago

The report is also full of charts and data that can be downloaded and put to use.

In full, the report:

• Examines the global smartphone platform market's recent quarterly performance.
• Quantifies the swift rise of Chinese vendors Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi, ZTE, and Coolpad.
• Discusses market share trends in eleven major mobile markets, including Europe, China, Japan, Brazil, and the United States.
• Breaks down the current position of industry stalwarts Apple and Samsung amid rising competition.